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Speaking at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Wednesday, October 17, 2018.

The Preamble

In his book The Philosophy of History, the German philosopher George Hegel says that the Africans did not contribute and are not capable of contributing to world civilisation. George Hegel is the greatest source of influence in the Western intellectual tradition having influenced intellectual giants like Karl Marx.

The idea that the African descendants have not contributed anything to World civilisation is a dangerous one because the African child will grow up thinking that the African ancestors were consumers of other people’s ideas instead of being producers of new knowledge. This status quo, if left unchallenged, perpetuates the myth that an African has not and cannot contribute novel ideas to the scientific body of knowledge. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In this scholarly paper, we show that we need to expose the African child to the uncontested facts of history with respect to the intellectual achievements of those who have gone before like the Nubians (Armelagos, 2010) who invented the antibiotic tetracycline 2000 years before the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was granted a patent for the discovery of tetracycline in 1950.

The authenticity of ancestral knowledge has huge implications for the future generations such as an opportunity to revive an innovation and enterprising culture. Studies show that exposure to an innovation culture engenders more innovation.